Happy Blogaversary!

This has been one of the fastest years of my life, which is something I say about pretty much every single year, but this time I mean it. When I started this endeavor I had a sweet 8-month old girl that couldn’t sleep through the night and an energetic 2 1/2 year old that was displaying some psychotic behaviors. I was relatively new to the SAHM scene and trying to make friends, find myself, juggle two kids simultaneously, stay atop my DVR, and of course be a good wife (which at the time didn’t include cleaning very often and still doesn’t).

From smiley 8-month old baby to sassy (and despite what this picture shows, smiley) 19-month old toddler

A year later, I have a pair of Sour Patch Kids: first they’re sour, then they’re sweet. Olivia is walking and talking…and demanding and stringing together her first two word sentence: “No, Mine!” AJR has morphed into a little boy and is fully potty trained and sleeping somewhat peacefully in his own big boy bed. I am loathe to admit it but the pendulum swings back and forth from my sweet baby boy to all-grown-up faster than my overly emotional heart can handle.

I don’t think the mischievous gleam in his eyes will go away no matter how old he is

I am so thankful to have this blog to document the journey. The year has been a blur and while it’s not all nice and neat, these blog posts are a way to document the memories. Being a parent is hard. It truly is. I’ve talked about it at length here and here and here. It’s been cathartic to have my fingers fly across the keyboard and have my feelings pour out in a word vomitous way, purging feelings of anxiety, guilt, doubt, and frustration. There have been times where I was in the middle of a shit storm of a day and I turned on a show for the kids and snuck into another room to write about what was happening. Best parenting moment? No. But it kept me sane and I was able to write a raw and honest post that allowed me to purge the negative feelings I had around whatever was happening that day.

I’ve said from the beginning that if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry. My days are filled with a lot of laughter and I know years from now the moments that drove me crazy will for sure induce a fit of giggles. That said, some of my favorite posts from this past year have been the ones where I stopped being polite and got a little real. Posts where I wrote about how motherhood felt oppressive and suffocating and thankless. Those posts are devoid of a lot of my unusual brand of humor, but I enjoyed writing them so much because I found I’ve found that I’m not alone. That the things I’m saying aren’t unique to me and my situation and that a lot of people feel the same way. That we all love our kids with this intense ferocity yet also can admit that sometimes they can be assholes that cause us yearn for the days when we got more sleep and didn’t have to answer to the cutest little dictators ever created.

AJR has gone into a “refuse to look into the camera” phase. Olivia still brings the cheese.

When I told my husband was I starting a blog he was concerned about opening myself up to judgment. Or calls to CPS. My main concern was that I would run out of things to write about, but my kids saw to it that that would never happen. Joe’s comments have remained in the back of my mind at times, mostly when I’m talking about fruit snacks or screen time or referring to my children as wailing banshees that could have only been birthed from the depths of Hades. That nagging fear was quickly put to bed when people shared their own war stories of motherhood or shot me a virtual slow clap for doing what I had to do to survive. We are all in this together and everyone is just trying their best.

This blog will probably never be anything bigger than what it is now unless I write a controversial post called “Why I’m Using Dog Bark Training Collars To Get My Kids to Use Their Inside Voices” that goes viral across HuffPo Parents and Scary Mommy, setting the comments section ablaze. And that’s totally fine by me. My very first blog post was a list of reasons why I was doing this in the first place. Those reasons still hold true today: I love to write, I need an outlet for all this motherhood stuff, and I want something that’s strictly for me even though 99.99% of my posts are about my children.

To be safe, send both.

It’s been wild and fun documenting my journey and being able to share it with others. Thank you to anyone that has ever taken the time to read one of my posts and/or reached out to say something. The exchanging of stories, the encouraging comments, and of course the hilarious wine/parenting related memes that you’ve shared have been such a fun bonus to this blog. I think we can all agree that rainbows and butterfly kisses parenting ain’t, so sharing your parenting trials and tribulations have encouraged me to be more open about mine. If nothing else, at least you can say to yourself “At least my kids don’t do THAT!” when you read my blog.

I want to keep this blog going for years to come. Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of my life and I simply lack the brain functionality to remember them properly. AJR and Olivia, one day if you happen to read this, I hope you can see through the expletives and frustration and realize that I love you both so much that if I pause to think about it, my heart physically hurts. But in order to do that, sometimes I just had to let it out that you are driving me f’ing bananas. Thank you for being the cutest and most mischievous little subjects. I’ve never lacked for content with you two and doubt that I ever will.